Power transformers are vital equipment in electrical networks and are the most expensive ones in substations. In order to increase their availability and reliability, controlled switching must be applied for reducing cores saturation during its energization, called “inrush currents”. These inrush currents are asymmetrical, high-magnitude, harmonic-rich, and may cause many undesirable effects such as maloperation of protective relays and fuse, mechanical damage to the transformer winding and generally reduce the lifetime and quality of power systems. An efficient technique to reduce these inrush currents is to energize the transformer when the dynamic flux generated by the source is equal to its residual flux. A simplified model is adopted to analyze the physical phenomena related to the switching applications. In order to assess the feasibility of this technique, numerous simulations have been performed using EMTP simulator. The critical requirements for each component of the controlled switching system such as pieces of line, circuit breakers have been studied in detail in order to determine the best switching instant calculation algorithm. Then statistical validation tests have been conducted to evaluate the performances of its different approaches. Finally a study dedicated to the reconstitution of residual flux using a capacitive voltage transformer (CVT) has been carried on in order to apply the controlled switching algorithm in substations using their existing measurement equipments.
